Search results for ""pennsylvania state university press""

A pivotal figure in critical theory and the modern/postmodern debates, G. W. F. Hegel is the subject of differing feminist critiques. Going beyond and behind Simone de Beauvoir's creative appropriation of Hegel in The Second Sex, the essays gathered together here think both with and against the grain of Hegel's dialectical theory through the lens of gender issues found in his philosophy. Some of the authors focus on prominent passages on woman and the feminine in Hegel's work, while others argue that it is interpretations of the margins of his text that are most telling. Hegel articulates one of the central questions with which political feminists are concerned: how to conceptualize identity and difference. A point of contention among the authors is whether or not Hegel's speculative system, with its "reconciliation" of identity and difference, "answers" this question. Contributors include the French philosopher Luce Irigaray, the Italian feminist Carla Lonzi, and the Canadian theoretician Mary O'Brien, along with Seyla Benhabib, Patricia Jagentowicz Mills, David Farrell Krell, Frances Olsen, Naomi Schor, Eric O. Clarke, Carole Pateman, Heidi M. Ravven, Alison L. Brown, and Shari Neller Starrett. Read together, the articles stress the transgressive nature of feminist theory as it challenges disciplinary boundaries; they are the articulation of the many different strategies and positions of the "vigorous debate" that defines feminist theory today.

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Consisting almost entirely of new essays specially prepared for this volume, Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt illuminates the diversity of contemporary feminisms while also generating new and suggestive readings of Hannah Arendt's political thought. The contributing authors' shared interest in Arendt provides a ground upon which to work out their disagreements regarding feminist theory and practice. At the same time, their shared commitment to some brand of feminism leads them to engage Arendt on an unusually wide array of issues, such as gender, sexuality, the body, politics, friendship, solidarity, identity, nationalism, and revolution.Recent developments in feminist theory and practice have prompted a reconsideration of Arendt that includes a critical reevaluation of earlier feminist judgments of her work. From feminist perspectives that interrogate, politicize, and historicize—rather than simply redeploy—categories like "woman," "identity," or "experience," Arendt's well-known hostility to feminism and her critical stance toward identitarian and essentialist definitions of "woman" begin to look more like an advantage than a liability. Arendt's famous reluctance to identify herself as a woman and to address women's issues looks less like a personal problem of male-identification and more like a political stand that resists the reach of a symbolic order that seeks to define, categorize, and stabilize her in terms of one essential, unriven, and always known identity.Thus, the volume's authors move beyond feminism's traditional concern with the "woman question" to ask, further, what contemporary feminisms might learn from Arendt's conceptions of politics, action, and identity.

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A remarkable recounting of a human journey through an inhumane world.What does it mean to be a “refugee”? It is easy for those who live in relative freedom to ignore or even to villainize people who have been forced to flee their homes. After all, it can be hard to identify with others’ experiences when you haven’t been in their shoes.In Hakim’s Odyssey, we see firsthand how war can make anyone a refugee. Hakim, a successful young Syrian who had his whole life ahead of him, tells his story: how war forced him to leave everything behind, including his family, his friends, his home, and his business. After the Syrian uprising in 2011, Hakim was arrested and tortured, his town was bombed, his business was seized by the army, and members of his family were arrested or disappeared. This first leg of his odyssey follows Hakim as he travels from Syria to Lebanon, Lebanon to Jordan, and Jordan to Turkey, where he struggles to earn a living and dreams of one day returning to his home.This graphic novel is necessary reading for our time. Alternately hopeful and heartbreaking, Hakim’s Odyssey is a story about what it means to be human in a world that sometimes fails to be humane.

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Americans have long had a taste for the art and culture of Holland’s Golden Age. As a result, the United States can boast extraordinary holdings of Dutch paintings. Celebrated masters such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer, and Frans Hals are exceptionally well represented, but many fine paintings by their contemporaries can be found as well. In this groundbreaking volume, fourteen noted American and Dutch scholars examine the allure of seventeenth-century Dutch painting to Americans over the past centuries. The authors of Holland’s Golden Age in America explain in lively detail why and how American collectors as well as museums turned to the Dutch masters to enrich their collections. They examine the role played by Dutch settlers in colonial America and their descendants, the evolution of American appreciation of the Dutch school, the circumstances that led to the Dutch school swiftly becoming one of the most coveted national schools of painting, and, finally, the market for Dutch pictures today.Richly illustrated, this volume is an invaluable contribution to the scholarship on the collecting history of Dutch art in America, and it is certain to inspire further research. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Ronni Baer, Quentin Buvelot, Lloyd DeWitt, Peter Hecht, Lance Humphries, Walter Liedtke, Louisa Wood Ruby, Catherine B. Scallen, Annette Stott, Peter C. Sutton, Dennis P. Weller, Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., and Anne T. Woollett.

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During the French Revolution of 1830, insurgents raised some four thousand barricades. Afterward, lithographs of the street fighting flowed from the presses, creating the barricade's first imagery. This book documents the changing political valence of the revolutionary ideals associated with the barricade in France from 1830 to 1852. The Revolution Takes Form coordinates the political reality of the barricade with the divergent ways in which its image gave shape to the period's conceptions of class, revolution, and urban space. Engaging the instability of the barricade, art historian Jordan Marc Rose focuses on five politically charged works of art: Eugène Delacroix's La Liberté guidant le peuple, Honoré Daumier's Rue Transnonain, le 15 avril 1834 and L'Émeute, Auguste Préault's Tuerie, and Ernest Meissonier's Souvenir de guerre civile. The history of these artworks illuminates how such revolutionary insurrections were characterizedalong with the conceptions of the people they mobili

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For over 40 years, Jack M. Sasson has been studying and commenting on the cuneiform archives from Mari on the Euphrates River, especially those from the age of Hammurabi of Babylon. Among Mari’s wealth of documents, some of the most interesting are letters from and to kings, their advisers and functionaries, their wives and daughters, their scribes and messengers, and a variety of military personnel. The letters are revealing and often poignant. Sasson selects more than 700 letters as well as several excerpts from administrative documents, translating them and providing them with illuminating comments. In distilling a lifetime of study and interpretation, Sasson hopes to welcome readers into a fuller appreciation of a remarkable period in Mesopotamian civilization.Sasson’s presentation is organized around major institutions in an ancient culture: (1) Kingship, treating accumulation of wealth, control of vassals, dynastic marriages, treaty-obligations, as well as illustrating the hazards and vexation of ruling a large territory; (2) Administration, from palaces that teem with bureaucrats, musicians, and cooks, to the management of provinces and vassal kingdoms; (3) Warfare, military establishment and martial practices; (4) Society, including organs of justice (and shortcuts to it), crime, punishment, and civil transactions; (5) Religion, including notices on diverse pantheons, rituals, priesthood, cultic paraphernalia, vows, ordeals, and channels to the gods (divination, dreams, and prophecy); and (6) Culture, including ethnic distinctions, class structure, and moments in the life cycle (birth, childhood, family life, health matters, death, and commemoration).Sasson’s presentation of the material brings to life a world entombed for four millennia, concretizes the realities of ancient life, and gives it a human perspective that is at once instructive and entertaining.The book is accompanied by extensive concordances and indexes (including to biblical passages) that will be useful to those who wish to study the letters more intensively.

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The recognition formula, “you/they shall know that I am Yahweh,” is repeated more than seventy times in the book of Ezekiel. And yet, surprisingly, this refrain has not been analyzed in detail in recent research. In this study, John F. Evans attempts to uncover the literary and theological intent of the recognition formula in Ezekiel by comparing it with other instances of the phrase found elsewhere in the Bible.Complementing his analysis of the recognition formula in Ezekiel, Evans examines its use in Deuteronomy, 1 Kings, Isaiah, Joel, and, in particular, Exodus. In addition to some strong continuities between the formula in Exodus and Ezekiel, he finds a jarring disjunction: in Ezekiel the prophecy repeatedly declares that Israel “shall know that I am Yahweh” in judgment, while elsewhere in Scripture the formula typically sounds a positive note when spoken to God’s covenant people.Recent years have witnessed a renewed interest in the book of Ezekiel, especially as a book that reflects the experience of Jews in exile as parallel to their captivity in Egypt prior to the exodus. Biblical scholars and students interested in the theology of exile and the theological reaction to the destruction of the Judean state in 586 BCE will find this book enlightening and useful.

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The Bible says that YHWH alone is God and that there is none like him—but texts and artwork from antiquity show that many gods looked very similar. In this volume, scholars of the Hebrew Bible and its historical contexts address the problem of YHWH’s ancient look-alikes, providing recommendations for how Jews and Christians can think theologically about this challenge.Sooner or later, whether in a religion class or a seminary course, students bump up against the fact that God—the biblical God—was one among other, comparable gods. The ancient world was full of gods, including great gods of conquering empires, dynastic gods of petty kingdoms, goddesses of fertility, and personal spirit guardians. And in various ways, these gods look like the biblical God. Like the God of the Bible, they, too, controlled the fates of nations, chose kings, bestowed fecundity and blessing, and cared for their individual human charges. They spoke and acted. They experienced wrath and delight. They inspired praise. All of this leaves Jews and Christians in a bind: how can they confess that the God named YHWH was (and is) the true and living God, in view of this God’s profound similarities to all these others?The essays in this volume address the theological challenge these parallels create, providing reflections on how Jews and Christians can keep faith in YHWH as God while acknowledging the reality of YHWH’s divine doppelgängers. It will be welcomed by undergraduates studying religion; seminarians and graduate students of Bible, theology, and the ancient world; and adult education classes.

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As we confront the challenges of emerging diseases, environmental health threats, and gaps in health equity, medical professionals need versatile communication tools that help people make informed decisions and engage them in constructive conversations about the health of their communities. This book illuminates the power of comics to meet that need.Graphic Public Health demonstrates the range and potential of comics to address topics such as immunization promotion, outbreak prevention, gun violence, opioid addiction prevention, and climate change. It features the work of acclaimed cartoonists Ellen Forney, David Lasky, and Roberta Gregory, pieces by up-and-coming artists, and comics that Meredith Li-Vollmer produced as a communications specialist for Seattle’s public health department. More than a collection of cartoons, this book connects comics with fundamentals of health communication and discusses why the form can be uniquely effective for these purposes. Each chapter focuses on the use of graphic public health in the context of four specific goals: health literacy, risk communication, health promotion, and advocacy. Li-Vollmer also includes guidance for practitioners getting started in creating comics for any form of public information, and especially for public health.Practical and purposeful, Graphic Public Health is a clarion call for the current era and an invaluable resource for public health professionals and advocates, scholars of comics and graphic studies, and fans of the graphic medicine genre.

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Looking at Trauma: A Tool Kit for Clinicians is an easy-to-use, engaging resource designed to address the challenges health care professionals face in providing much-needed trauma psychoeducation to clients with histories of childhood trauma. Developed by trauma therapists Abby Hershler and Lesley Hughes in collaboration with artist Patricia Nguyen and biomedical communications specialist Shelley Wall, this book presents twelve trauma treatment models accompanied by innovative and engaging comics. The models help clinicians provide practical information about the impacts of trauma to their clients—and support those clients in understanding and managing their distressing symptoms.Topics covered include complex posttraumatic stress disorder, emotion regulation, memory, relationship patterns, and self-care. Each chapter features step-by-step instructions on how to use the treatment models with clients; practical educational tips from experienced clinicians in the field of childhood trauma; interactive trauma education comics; a foundational framework focused on care for the provider; and references for further study.Intended for use in therapeutic, clinical, and classroom settings, this book is a valuable resource for all healthcare workers. In particular, social workers, psychotherapists, spiritual care providers, nurses, occupational therapists, psychologists, primary care physicians, and psychiatrists will find this tool kit indispensable.

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Since its construction, Notre Dame Cathedral has played a central role in French cultural identity. In the wake of the tragic fire of 2019, questions of how to restore the fabric of this quintessential French monument are once more at the forefront. This all-too-prescient book, first published in French in 2013, takes a central place in the conversation. The Gothic cathedral par excellence, Notre Dame set the architectural bar in the competitive years of the third quarter of the twelfth century and dazzled the architects and aesthetes of the Enlightenment with its structural ingenuity. In the nineteenth century, the cathedral became the touchstone of a movement to restore medieval patrimony to its rightful place at the cultural heart of France: it was transformed into a colossal laboratory in which architects Jean-Baptiste Lassus and Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc anatomized structures, dismembered them, put them back, or built them anew—all the while documenting their work with scientific precision.Taking as their point of departure a three-dimensional laser scan of the cathedral created in 2010, architectural historians Dany Sandron and the late Andrew Tallon tell the story of the construction and reconstruction of Notre Dame in visual terms. With over a billion points of data, the scan supplies a highly accurate spatial map of the building, which is anatomized and rebuilt virtually. Fourteen double-page images represent the cathedral at specific points in time, while the accompanying text sets out the history of the building, addressing key topics such as the fundraising campaign, the construction of the vaults, and the liturgical function of the choir. Featuring 170 full-color illustrations and elegantly translated by Andrew Tallon and Lindsay Cook, Notre Dame Cathedral is an enlightening history of one of the world’s most treasured architectural achievements.

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This comics anthology delves deeply into the messy and often taboo subject of human reproduction. Featuring work by luminaries such as Carol Tyler, Alison Bechdel, and Joyce Farmer, Graphic Reproduction is an illustrated challenge to dominant cultural narratives about conception, pregnancy, and childbirth.The comics here expose the contradictions, complexities, and confluences around diverse individual experiences of the entire reproductive process, from trying to conceive to child loss and childbirth. Jenell Johnson’s introduction situates comics about reproduction within the growing field of graphic medicine and reveals how they provide a discursive forum in which concepts can be explored and presented as uncertainties rather than as part of a prescribed or expected narrative. Through comics such as Lyn Chevley’s groundbreaking “Abortion Eve,” Bethany Doane’s “Pushing Back: A Home Birth Story,” Leah Hayes’s “Not Funny Ha-Ha,” and “Losing Thomas & Ella: A Father’s Story,” by Marcus B. Weaver-Hightower, the collection explores a myriad of reproductive experiences and perspectives. The result is a provocative, multifaceted portrait of one of the most basic and complicated of all human experiences, one that can be hilarious and heartbreaking.Featuring work by well-known comics artists as well as exciting new voices, this incisive collection is an important and timely resource for understanding how reproduction intersects with sociocultural issues. The afterword and a section of discussion exercises and questions make it a perfect teaching tool.

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Originally published in two parts in 1605 and 1615 and often considered “the first modern novel,” Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote is undoubtedly the most influential work in the Spanish literary canon. In this groundbreaking graphic adaptation, cultural commentator Ilan Stavans and illustrator Roberto Weil reimagine Cervantes’s masterpiece in ways that are both faithful and whimsically irreverent.In these pages, Stavans and Weil pay tribute to Cervantes’s novel as well as its complex resonances in the centuries since its publication. The dauntless “mad knight” Don Quixote and his hapless squire, Sancho Panza, encounter the infamous windmills, contend with disbelieving peasants and noblemen, and seek relentlessly for Quixote’s imaginary love, Dulcinea. They also confront their own creators and adapters—Cervantes, Salvador Dalí, Franz Kafka, and Stavans and Weil themselves—and try to make sense out of the madness of drones, taxicabs, and their own literary immortality. The result is an ambitious and compelling graphic novel that reveals Don Quixote as un libro infinito—a work that reflects the past, present, and future of the human condition.Available in both English and Spanglish editions, this inspired and audacious interpretation of one of the greatest novels ever written is sure to be savored by generations to come.

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This handbook provides a practical guide for the student and scholar alike who wishes to use the Septuagint (LXX) in the text-critical analysis of the Hebrew Bible. It does not serve as another theoretical introduction to the LXX, but it provides all the practical background information needed for the integration of the LXX in biblical studies. The LXX, together with the Masoretic Text and several Qumran scrolls, remains the most significant source of information for the study of ancient Scripture, but it is written in Greek, and many technical details need to be taken into consideration when using this tool. Therefore, a practical handbook such as this is needed for the integration of the Greek translation in the study of the Hebrew Bible.The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research is based on much background information, intuition and experience, clear thinking, and a solid description of the procedures followed. The author presents his handbook after half a century of study of the Septuagint, four decades of specialized teaching experience, and involvement in several research projects focusing on the relation between the Hebrew and Greek Bibles.The first two editions of this handbook, published by Simor of Jerusalem (Jerusalem Biblical Studies 3 [1981] and 8 [1997]), received much praise but have been out of print for a considerable period. This, the third, edition presents a completely revised version of the previous editions based on the many developments that took place in the analysis of the Septuagint, the Hebrew Bible and the Qumran Scrolls. Much new information has also been added.Eisenbrauns has been involved in the marketing of the previous two editions and is proud to offer now its own completely novel edition. A must for students of the Hebrew Bible, textual criticism, the Septuagint and the other ancient translations, Dead Sea Scrolls, and Jewish Hellenism.

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Leo Strauss famously asserted that the fundamental, defining debate within Western civilization is that between Jerusalem and Athens, piety and philosophy, the Bible and Plato. And yet, surprisingly, Strauss never published any of his thoughts on Plato’s dialogue on piety, the Euthyphro.This volume presents, for the first time, Strauss’s 1948 notebook on the dialogue, written in preparation for a class at the New School for Social Research. Featuring close analysis and line-by-line commentary, the notebook opens a window onto a philosophic mind in action, as Strauss asks questions of the classic text, jots down observations and formulations, and analyzes very specific terms and arguments but also steps back, reviews the overall movement of the dialogue, and reconsiders previous conclusions. Beyond the notebook, the volume also brings together all the known materials that lay out Strauss’s thoughts on the Euthyphro. This includes newly transcribed and edited public lectures, illuminating appendixes, critical essays by volume editors Hannes Kerber and Svetozar Y. Minkov and scholar Wayne Ambler, an account of Strauss’s public lecture, and a new English translation of Plato’s Euthyphro by Seth Benardete, a classicist and one of Strauss’s students.Engaging and inspiring, Leo Strauss on Plato’s “Euthyphro” is a vital resource for scholars and students of political theory, readers interested in the intersection of philosophy and religion, and a must-have for anyone who studies Strauss.

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This volume examines Saint George’s intertwined traditions in the competing states of the eastern Mediterranean and Transcaucasia, demonstrating how rival conceptions of this well-known saint became central to Crusader, Eastern Christian, and Islamic medieval visual cultures.Saint George Between Empires links the visual cultures of Byzantium, North Africa, the Levant, Syria, and the Caucasus during the Crusader era to redraw our picture of interfaith relations and artistic networks. Heather Badamo recovers and recontextualizes a vast body of images and literature—from etiquette manuals and romances to miracle accounts and chronicles—to describe the history of Saint George during a period of religious and political fragmentation, between his “rise” to cross-cultural prominence in the eleventh century and his “globalization” in the fifteenth. In Badamo’s analysis, George emerges as an exemplar of cross-cultural encounter and global translation.Featuring important new research on monuments and artworks that are no longer available to scholars as a result of the occupation of Syria and parts of Iraq, Saint George Between Empires will be welcomed by scholars of Byzantine, medieval, Islamic, and Eastern Christian art and cultural studies.

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How does one deal with a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease at the age of forty-three? My Degeneration, by former Anchorage Daily News staff cartoonist Peter Dunlap-Shohl, answers the question with humor and passion, recounting the author’s attempt to come to grips with the “malicious whimsy” of this chronic, progressive, and disabling disease. This graphic novel tracks Dunlap-Shohl’s journey through depression, the worsening symptoms of the disease, the juggling of medications and their side effects, the impact on relations with family and community, and the raft of mental and physical changes wrought by the malady. My Degeneration examines the current state of Parkinson’s care, including doctor/patient relations and the repercussions of a disease that, among other things, impairs movement, can rob patients of their ability to speak or write, degrades sufferers’ ability to deal with complexity, and interferes with the sense of balance. Readers learn what it’s like to undergo a dramatic, demanding, and audacious bit of high-tech brain surgery that can mysteriously restore much of a patient’s control over symptoms. But My Degeneration is more than a Parkinson’s memoir. Dunlap-Shohl gives the person newly diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease the information necessary to cope with it on a day-to-day basis. He chronicles the changes that life with the disease can bring to the way one sees the world and the way one is seen by the wider community. Dunlap-Shohl imparts a realistic basis for hope—hope not only to carry on, but to enjoy a decent quality of life.

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This book explores a series of powerful artifacts associated with King Solomon via legendary or extracanonical textual sources. Tracing their cultural resonance throughout history, art historian Allegra Iafrate delivers exciting insights into these objects and interrogates the ways in which magic manifests itself at a material level.Each chapter focuses on a different Solomonic object: a ring used to control demons; a mysterious set of bottles that constrain evil forces; an endless knot or seal with similar properties; the shamir, known for its supernatural ability to cut through stone; and a flying carpet that can bring the sitter anywhere he desires. Taken together, these chapters constitute a study on the reception of the figure of Solomon, but they are also cultural biographies of these magical objects and their inherent aesthetic, morphological, and technical qualities.Thought-provoking and engaging, Iafrate’s study shows how ancient magic artifacts live on in our imagination, in items such as Sauron’s ring of power, Aladdin’s lamp, and the magic carpet. It will appeal to historians of art, religion, folklore, and literature.

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Analyses of formal governmental institutions and electoral laws have considerably advanced our understanding of how politics works in Latin America. However, these analyses largely overlook the process of candidate recruitment and selection, an issue intricately tied to political outcomes and the functioning of democracy. In this volume, a team of experts uses a common analytic framework developed by the editors to analyze the recruitment and selection of executive and legislative candidates in six major countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay. It does so from two perspectives. First, as a dependent variable, the volume explores the party and legal factors that drive the recruitment and selection process, thus producing particular types of candidates. It then considers candidate type as an independent variable, analyzing the impact of candidate type on campaigns, political parties, and the behavior of legislators and presidents once elected. The result is the first fully comparative inquiry into a central, but largely neglected, determinant of politics in Latin America.

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This is the third and last volume of the only complete and fully reliable English-language version of the memoirs of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. In the first two volumes, published by Pennsylvania State University Press in 2005 and 2006, respectively, Khrushchev tells the story of his rise to power and his part in the fight against Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. He also discusses agriculture, the housing problem, and other issues of domestic policy, as well as defense and disarmament. This volume is devoted to international affairs. Khrushchev describes his dealings with foreign statesmen and his state visits to Britain, the United States, France, Scandinavia, India, Afghanistan, Burma, Egypt, and Indonesia. In the first part, Khrushchev talks about relations between the Soviet Union and the Western powers. Of particular interest is his perspective on the Berlin, U-2, and Cuban missile crises. The second part focuses on the Communist world—above all, the deterioration of relations with China and the tensions in Eastern Europe, including relations with Tito’s Yugoslavia, Gomulka’s Poland, and the 1956 Soviet intervention in Hungary. In the third part, Khrushchev discusses the search for allies in the Third World. The Appendixes contain biographies, a bibliography, and a chronology, as well as the reminiscences of Khrushchev’s chief bodyguard about the visit to the United Nations in 1960 at which the famous “shoe-banging” incident occurred—or, perhaps, did not occur.

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Soulful jazz singer Billie Holiday is remembered today for her unique sound, troubled personal history, and a catalogue that includes such resonant songs as “Strange Fruit” and “God Bless the Child.” Holiday and her music were also strongly shaped by religion, often in surprising ways. Religion Around Billie Holiday examines the spiritual and religious forces that left their mark on the performer during her short but influential life.Mixing elements of biography with the history of race and American music, Tracy Fessenden explores the multiple religious influences on Holiday’s life and sound, including her time spent as a child in a Baltimore convent, the echoes of black Southern churches in the blues she encountered in brothels, the secular riffs on ancestral faith in the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, and the Jewish songwriting culture of Tin Pan Alley. Fessenden looks at the vernacular devotions scholars call lived religion—the Catholicism of the streets, the Jewishness of the stage, the Pentecostalism of the roadhouse or the concert arena—alongside more formal religious articulations in institutions, doctrine, and ritual performance.Insightful and compelling, Fessenden’s study brings unexpected materials and archival voices to bear on the shaping of Billie Holiday’s exquisite craft and indelible persona. Religion Around Billie Holiday illuminates the power and durability of religion in the making of an American musical icon.

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This volume is the Tenth Anniversary Edition of a book that was honored in 1992 as an "Outstanding Book" by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in the United States. Reprinted many times since its first publication in 1991, Who Is Black? has become a staple in college classrooms throughout the United States, helping students understand this nation’s history of miscegenation and the role that the "one-drop rule" has played in it. In this special anniversary edition, the author brings the story up to date in an epilogue. There he highlights some revealing responses to Who Is Black? and examines recent challenges to the one-drop rule, including the multiracial identity movement and a significant change in the census classification of racial and ethnic groups.

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This is the final installment in a tripartite critical edition of the inscriptions of the last major Neo-Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal, and the members of his family.The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 5/3 provides reliable, up-to-date editions and English translations of 106 historical inscriptions written in the Akkadian and Sumerian languages. These inscriptions account for all certainly identifiable and positively attributable inscriptions of Ashurbanipal discovered in Babylonia, in the East Tigris Region, and outside of the Assyrian Empire, together with inscriptions of some members of Ashurbanipal’s family—his wife Libbāli-šarrat, as well as his sons and successors Aššur-etel-ilāni and Sîn-šarra-iškun—and loyal officials. Each text edition is accompanied by an English translation, brief introduction, catalogue of exemplars, commentary, and bibliography. In addition to a critical introduction to the sources, RINAP 5/3 also includes relevant studies of various aspects of Ashurbanipal’s reign and the final years of the Assyrian Empire; translations of the “Chronicle Concerning the Early Years of Nabopolassar” and the “Fall of Nineveh Chronicle”; photographs of objects inscribed with texts of Ashurbanipal, Aššur-etel-ilāni, and Sîn-šarra-iškun; indexes of museum and excavation numbers and selected publications; and indexes of proper names.Expertly prepared by three leading philologists, this eagerly awaited work will be a key reference for Assyriologists, Near Eastern historians, biblical scholars, and scholars of ancient languages for decades to come.

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This study uses modern linguistic theory to analyze a frequently recurring syntactic phenomenon in the Hebrew Bible that has thus far resisted explanation: כי אם.The combination of the two particles כי and אם produces a construction that is notoriously difficult to describe, analyze syntactically, and translate. Dictionaries of Biblical Hebrew offer a dizzying variety of translations for this construction, including “that if,” “except,” “unless,” “but,” “but only,” and “surely,” among other possibilities. In this book, Grace J. Park provides a new approach that strives for greater precision and consistency in translation. Park argues that כי אם is used in three patterns: the “full focus” pattern, the “reduced focus” pattern, and the less common “non-focus” pattern. Her syntactic analysis of all 156 occurrences of the כי אם construction in the Bible lends greater clarity to the contested passages.Drawing on recent linguistic research into the typology of clausal nominalization as well as previous work on contrastive focus, this innovative project provides important new insight into the syntax of Biblical Hebrew. It will be especially valuable for scholars seeking to translate כי אם more consistently and accurately.

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This book explores the relationship between the so-called ventive morpheme in Akkadian (-am) and the related suffixes -n and -a in other Semitic languages, including Amarna Canaanite, Ugaritic, Hebrew, and Arabic. Using formal reconstructions of the various morphemes and a functional analysis of their different usages, Ambjörn Sjörs convincingly argues that these endings are cognate morphemes that were formally and functionally related to the ventive morpheme in Akkadian.Sjörs provides a systematic description of non-allative ventive verbs in Old Babylonian, the energic and volitive in Amarna Canaanite, the energic and lengthened prefix conjugation in Ugaritic, the lengthened imperfect consecutive in Biblical Hebrew, and the subjunctive and energic in Classical Arabic. Sjörs explains how these verb forms were used within the framework of grammaticalization theory and demonstrates how the suffixes are historically related.Clearly and persuasively argued, Motion, Voice, and Mood in the Semitic Verb sheds valuable light on the Akkadian ventive and its relationship to the other related morphemes. It will be welcomed by linguists specializing in Akkadian, Amarna Canaanite, Ugaritic, Hebrew, and Arabic.

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This book presents the final report of the excavations at Yotvata, the largest oasis in the Arabah Valley, conducted by the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University in 1974–1980 under the direction of Dr. Zeʾev Meshel. The report covers two central sites: a fortified Iron I site and an Early Islamic settlement. The Iron I remains consist of an irregular casemate wall surrounding a courtyard. The location of this site suggests that the settlement was established in order to protect the water sources and to overlook and supervise the nearby crossroads. Based on the relative proximity of the site to Timna, it may be concluded that the oasis formed the main source of water and wood for the population involved in copper production in that region.The rich finds uncovered at the Early Islamic settlement—including a large courtyard building and a nearby bathhouse, among other structures—point to habitation from the end of the seventh to the early ninth century CE. The proximity of the settlement to a sophisticated irrigation system (qanat) and the administrative/economic ostraca discovered at the site suggest that it served as the center of an agricultural estate owned by an elite Muslim family. Among the unique finds is a large assemblage of locally produced, handmade pottery, which is thoroughly studied here.The findings from the excavations at the Yotvata oasis have made a major contribution to the study of Early Islamic settlement and material culture in the greater Arabah region and beyond.

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Theban Tomb 188 is the sole archaeological site in the ancient Theban necropolis securely dated to the reign of the “heretic pharaoh” Akhenaten (1353–1336 BCE). The result of several years of clearance and recording by Dr. Susan Redford, director of the Akhenaten Temple Project’s Theban Tomb Survey, this richly illustrated book provides a detailed description of the remaining wall scenes and texts of this historically important ancient monument. In the fourteenth century BCE, Pharaoh Akhenaten attempted to institute a radical religious reform and moved his capital city to Amarna. This book publishes important evidence related to the Amarna period in ancient Egypt, specifically the plans, reliefs, and inscriptions of Theban Tomb 188, belonging to Parennefer, the tutor and butler of the king. Dr. Redford’s detailed archaeological study traces the rapid evolution of ideology, iconography, and iconoclasm, as revealed in Parennefer’s tomb. The decoration kept pace with the momentous changes in the king’s thinking, so that, when dovetailed with the pictorial evidence from the excavations of the great Gem-pa-aten temple at Karnak, it becomes possible to chronicle these rapid changes.This definitive study of the tomb of Parennefer will appeal to archaeologists, Egyptologists, historians of religion, and art historians working on the ancient Near East.

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The City of David, more specifically the southeastern hill of first- and second-millennium BCE Jerusalem, has long captivated the imagination of the world. Archaeologists and historians, biblical scholars and clergy, Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and tourists and armchair travelers from every corner of the globe, to say nothing of politicians of all stripes, look to this small stretch of land in awe, amazement, and anticipation.In the City of David, in the ridge leading down from the Temple Mount, hardly a stone has remained unturned. Archaeologists have worked at a dizzying pace digging and analyzing. But while preliminary articles abound, there is a grievous lack of final publications of the excavations—a regrettable limitation on the ability to fully integrate vital and critical results into the archaeological reconstruction of ancient Jerusalem.Excavations of the City of David are conducted under the auspices of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The Authority has now partnered with the Center for the Study of Ancient Jerusalem and its publication arm, the Ancient Jerusalem Publication Series, for the publication of reports that are written and designed for the scholar as well as for the general reader. Excavations in the City of David (APJ 1), is the first volume in this series.

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In this volume, Alhena Gadotti and Alexandra Kleinerman investigate how Akkadian speakers learned Sumerian during the Old Babylonian period in areas outside major cities. Despite the fact that it was a dead language at the time, Sumerian was considered a crucial part of scribal training due to its cultural importance. This book provides transliterations and translations of 715 cuneiform scribal school exercise texts from the Jonathan and Jeanette Rosen Ancient Near Eastern Studies Collection at Cornell University. These tablets, consisting mainly of lexical texts, illustrate the process of elementary foreign-language training at scribal schools during the Old Babylonian period. Although the tablets are all without provenance, discrepancies between these texts and those from other sites, such as Nippur and Ur, strongly suggest that the texts published here do not come from a previously studied location. Comparing these tablets with previously published documents, Gadotti and Kleinerman argue that elementary education in Mesopotamia was relatively standardized and that knowledge of cuneiform writing was more widespread than previously assumed.By refining our understanding of education in southern Mesopotamia, this volume elucidates more fully the pedagogical underpinnings of the world’s first curriculum devised to teach a dead language. As a text edition, it will make these important documents accessible to Assyriologists and Sumerologists for future study.

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Akkadian, a Semitic language attested in writing from 2600 BCE until the first century CE, was the language of Mesopotamia for nearly three millennia. This volume examines the language from a comparative and historical linguistic perspective. Inspired by the work of renowned linguist John Huehnergard and featuring contributions from top scholars in the field, Bēl Lišāni showcases the latest research on Akkadian linguistics. Chapters focus on a wide range of topics, including lexicon, morphology, word order, syntax, verbal semantics, and subgrouping. Building upon Huehnergard’s pioneering studies focused on the identification of Proto-Akkadian features, the contributors explore linguistic innovations in the language from historical and comparative perspectives. In doing so, they open the way for further etymological, dialectical, and lexical research into Akkadian. An important update on and synthesis of the research in Akkadian linguistics, this volume will be welcomed by Semitists, Akkadian language specialists, and scholars and students interested in historical linguistics. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Øyvind Bjøru, Maksim Kalinin, N. J. C. Kouwenberg, Sergey Loesov, Jacob J. de Ridder, Ambjörn Sjörs, Michael P. Streck, and Juan-Pablo Vita.

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In this book, Philip Zhakevich examines the technology of writing as it existed in the southern Levant during the Iron Age II period, after the alphabetic writing system had fully taken root in the region. Using the Hebrew Bible as its corpus and focusing on a set of Hebrew terms that designated writing surfaces and instruments, this study synthesizes the semantic data of the Bible with the archeological and art-historical evidence for writing in ancient Israel. The bulk of this work comprises an in-depth lexicographical analysis of Biblical Hebrew terms related to Israel’s writing technology. Employing comparative Semitics, lexical semantics, and archaeology, Zhakevich provides a thorough analysis of the origins of the relevant terms; their use in the biblical text, Ben Sira, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and ancient Hebrew inscriptions; and their translation in the Septuagint and other ancient versions. The final chapter evaluates Israel’s writing practices in light of those of the ancient world, concluding that Israel’s most common form of writing (i.e., writing with ink on ostraca and papyrus) is Egyptian in origin and was introduced into Canaan during the New Kingdom.Comprehensive and original in its scope, Scribal Tools in Ancient Israel is a landmark contribution to our knowledge of scribes and scribal practices in ancient Israel. Students and scholars interested in language and literacy in the first-millennium Levant in particular will profit from this volume.

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Two boys. One war-torn country. A world away, freedom.Twelve-year-old Adel and his cousin Shafi try to lead a normal childhood in war-torn Afghanistan. But when Adel’s father dies, everything changes. His uncle, a religious fundamentalist, sends Adel to study at a madrasa run by militants, where he is trained as an insurgent and chosen to carry out a suicide bombing. When his moment of martyrdom arrives, Adel’s detonator fails, and he is forced to flee the country or risk being killed by the Afghan police or the Taliban themselves.Together, Adel and Shafi set out to seek refuge in England, where Shafi’s brother now lives and where a new life awaits. With that hope, the two boys begin the perilous journey of 6,000 miles to freedom, crossing mountains on foot and squeezing into crowded trucks with other refugees. The two become separated only to find each other again in the Calais Jungle encampment, their last, hellish stop.Based on numerous testimonies from refugee youth, this poignant, timely, and well-documented story brings to life the traumatic experiences faced by Afghani children fleeing war and poverty, as well as the isolation they often feel as refugees in the West.

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For Cris and Miguel, creating a family will take a little luck and lots of determination. A Chance is the engrossing, heartwarming story of their struggles and triumphs. The narrative follows Cristina Durán and Miguel Giner Bou as they rebuild and reinvent themselves after their daughter Laia is born with cerebral palsy. Hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and doctors become part of their daily routine. There is one chance in a thousand that Laia will pull through—and they hold on to that chance with tremendous strength and indomitable joy.Years later, with the same courage and determination, Cristina and Miguel embark on the arduous process of adopting their second daughter, Selam, from Ethiopia. This time, they face a long period of training, psychological tests, interviews, and formalities before they can even pack their bags. And when they return with Selam, the challenge of reinvention awaits them yet again.

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James Hoffmeier is a giant in the field of Egyptology. Among his many publications are two volumes of archaeological reports from Tell el-Borg, where he led excavations from 1999 to 2008. He is also well known for his interest in how ancient Egypt and the biblical world intersected, having edited and written several books on the subject, including the recent “Did I Not Bring Israel Out of Egypt?” Biblical, Archaeological, and Egyptological Perspectives on the Exodus Narratives, published by Eisenbrauns.Dedicated to Hoffmeier, this volume features essays written by more than thirty of his colleagues, former students, and friends. The contributions cover the second and first millennia BCE—from the Egyptian Old Kingdom through the Persian period—as well as New Testament times. The subjects covered include archaeology, biblical studies, Egyptology, and, of course, how these fields intersect with one another.Among the many contributors are Aaron A. Burke, Deirdre Fulton, Rick Hess, Edmund Meltzer, Alan Millard, Steven Ortiz, Donald B. Redford, Gary A. Rendsburg, and Nili Shupak. This volume will be of interest to scholars and students who, following in the footsteps of Hoffmeier, are interested in how the biblical world interacted with ancient Egypt and the ancient Near East.

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This seventh volume of final reports of the Lahav Research Project’s efforts at Tell Halif in Southern Israel focuses on the team’s excavations and related regional ethnographic research at adjacent Khirbet Khuweilifeh, an early twentieth-century settlement of Bedouin and Arab fellahin clients. These efforts illustrate the symbiosis between the itinerant Bedouin and their seasonal sharecropper neighbors along the northern flanks of the Negev desert during and following the First World War in southern Palestine.The stratigraphic excavation and recovery of material culture from Cave Complex A revealed a pattern of occupation dating from the late nineteenth century C.E. up to the mid-1940s and produced hundreds of artifacts and samples, giving testimony to the lifeways of the fellahin who had inhabited the complex. The associated ethnographic research with Bedouin sheikhs and Hebron-area merchant informants established that the Complex’s most recent occupants were the family of a plow maker named Khalil al-Kaayke. The studies elucidated in this volume articulate in more detail the family’s patterns of subsistence, showing the interdependence of the Bedouin and fellahin partners. Examination of the pottery remains provides a profile of the site’s Stratum I, early twentieth-century ceramic forms and also reveals earlier Islamic-period and pre-Islamic traces.Over the past century the lifeways of these early twentieth-century Bedouin and their fellahin village neighbors in southern Palestine have been rapidly disappearing. This volume serves to chronicle and preserve data on their waning history and culture.

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For more than a century, scholars have debated whether Paul the apostle was a faithful follower of Jesus or a corruptor of Jesus’s message and the true founder of Christianity. Signs of Continuity intervenes in this debate by exploring a largely overlooked element of similarity between the two men: the place of miracles in their ministries.In his close analysis of the miracles performed by Jesus and Paul, Greg Rhodea points to signs of continuity between these two historical figures of Christianity. He argues that both Jesus and Paul understood their miracles as accompanying and actualizing a message of gracious inclusion of the marginalized, resisted proving their ability to work miracles to those who asked for a sign despite the importance of miracle-working to their personal authentication, and interpreted miracles as proof of the presence of the eschatological kingdom. Based on these similarities, Rhodea concludes that Paul the apostle knew of Jesus’s miracles and that he imitated Jesus in his own ministry of miracle-working.In highlighting this previously unexplored area of continuity, Rhodea makes a significant contribution to the debate over the relationship between Jesus and Paul. Biblical scholars and students interested in this debate will find Signs of Continuity enlightening and informative.

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Following the work of scholars who have attempted to rehabilitate the notion of “chosenness” in the Hebrew Bible and others who have focused more narrowly on the fate of non-Israelites in the Old Testament, The Unfavored centers on the role of two “unfavored” characters within Israel—Judah and Saul.Josef Sykora examines two narratives with seemingly opposite trajectories: the Joseph cycle in Genesis 37–50 and the Saul episode in 1 Samuel 13–15. Both contain passages that feel intrusive—Genesis 38 and 49 and 1 Samuel 13:7b–15a—and that coincide with Judah’s and Saul’s rise or fall in God’s favor. Taking seriously the redaction-critical proposals suggesting that these puzzling segments may stem from a later editorial hand, Sykora reorients them for theological purposes. He reads the two narratives first without and then with these intrusive parts in order to indicate what their message and content might mean for the idea of election in the Old Testament in general and for the fate of unfavored characters in particular.A freshly insightful exploration of chosenness in the Old Testament, The Unfavored guides us to new and deeper interpretations of these biblical texts.

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Tel Miqne-Ekron Field IV Lower—The Elite Zone, The Iron Age I and IIC, The Early and Late Philistine Cities, Parts 9/1-9/3B present the evidence of two large Philistines cites, one in Iron I, the period of its initial development, and the other in Iron IIC, its final stage when it achieved its zenith of physical growth and prosperity. They also offer a unique opportunity to check and evaluate the excavators' observations and conclusions based on their comprehensive database. Published under the auspices of the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, they comprise the final reports of the nine seasons of excavations during the years 1985-1995, directed by Trude Dothan and Seymour Gitin and sponsored by the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and the Hebrew University.Volume 9/1, The Iron Age I Early Philistine City covers Strata VII-IV, the 12th-early 10th centuries BCE. It includes a detailed discussion of the occupational history of the period with a comprehensive analysis of the ceramic assemblages and a selection of ceramic, lithic, clay, and metal objects with detailed discussions of jewelry, scarabs and ivory objects, as well as the faunal evidence. Volume 9/2, The Iron Age IIC Late Philistine City, which presents the evidence from Stratum I of the 7th and early 6th century BCE, is in press.Volume 9/3B The Iron Age I and IIC Late and Early Philistine Cities Plans and Sections includes every plan and section of each excavated Area in Field IV Lower.

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This volume is intended to introduce university and seminary students and scholars to the neglected field of ritual studies, particularly within the larger context of biblical and theological studies. At the same time, the author hopes to further the discussion by interacting with numerous scholars in the field, providing an extensive bibliography of relevant works. Klingbeil defines the basic terms used in ritual studies and explains the concepts involved in interpreting biblical ritual. He offers a broad history of the study of biblical ritual, beginning with the critiques of ritual found in the Old Testament prophetic books and surveying attitudes toward ritual down to modern times. Drawing on the fields of anthropology and sociology, as well as his decade of work in the field, Klingbeil presents a comprehensive reading strategy for biblical ritual texts. In addition, he explores connections between ritual studies and theological research. This ground-breaking study promises to generate discussion about biblical ritual and provides an excellent introduction to this growing field of study for students and scholars.

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One of the earliest surviving manifestations of the cultural heritage of the Land of Israel in ancient times is the use of the cuneiform script from the Middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age. Cuneiform in Canaan: The Next Generation presents an updated version of the original Cuneiform in Canaan volume that was published by the Israel Exploration Society and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2006. The updated volume presents all ninety-seven of the known texts, including new tablets and fragments from Hazor, Megiddo, and now, for the first time, Jerusalem. The volume provides critical editions, up-to-date bibliographies, and discussion of the sources, as well as a new, updated introduction highlighting the ongoing work of the Cuneiform in Canaan Research Project of the Hebrew University, under the directorship of Professor Wayne Horowitz of the Institute of Archaeology.

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This is the first monograph dedicated to the site of Socoh in the Judean Shephelah. Our research was initiated in 2010 as an intensive survey by the Institute of Archaeology, Southern Adventist University, and the Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The study incorporates historical sources that are listed and analyzed, including the Bible, ancient Near Eastern, Byzantine, and Medieval records. A history of the research conducted over the past 190 years by explorers, geographers, and archaeologists is compiled, before providing the full report on the results of an intensive site survey conducted at Socoh in 2010. Finally, specialized studies of the finds and a report of recent salvage excavations of burial caves, looted by antiquity robbers nearby, give a state-of-the-art presentation of the latest information known about this important biblical site in southern Judah.

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In this book, Bob Becking provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the origins, lives, and eventual fate of the Yehudites, or Judeans, at Elephantine, framed within the greater history of the rise and fall of the Persian Empire. The Yehudites were among those mercenaries recruited by the Persians to defend the southwestern border of the empire in the fifth century BCE. Becking argues that this group, whom some label as the first “Jews,” lived on the island of Elephantine in relative peace with other ethnic groups under the aegis of the pax persica. Drawing on Aramaic and Demotic texts discovered during excavations on the island and at Syene on the adjacent shore of the Nile, Becking finds evidence of intermarriage, trade cooperation, and even a limited acceptance of one another’s gods between the various ethnic groups at Elephantine. His analysis of the Elephantine Yehudites’ unorthodox form of Yahwism provides valuable insight into the group’s religious beliefs and practices. An important contribution to the study of Yehudite life in the diaspora, this accessibly written and sweeping history enhances our understanding of the varieties of early Jewish life and how these contributed to the construction of Judaism.

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The “radiocarbon revolution” has profoundly altered traditional historical frameworks in the Near East. Addressing the ramifications of the new, higher radiometric (14C) chronology, as well as the impact of new excavations and expanded data sets on third-millennium BCE studies, this volume brings together twenty-three essays covering a diverse array of topics, such as urbanism, heterarchy, nomadism, ruralism, terminology, and cultural continuity/discontinuity.Along with the radical two-hundred-year shift to a higher chronology for the southern Levant, the fast pace of discoveries throughout the Levant and Egypt necessitates constant updating and reevaluation. The principal consequence of these data for scholarship is the realignment of historical correlations between the southern and northern Levant in the EB III–IV periods, and between the southern Levant and the Egyptian Late Dynastic and Old Kingdom periods. But the contributions to this volume also detail new and tantalizing information from excavated sites that may not fit into traditional models of the Early Bronze III–IV periods. As this collection of articles attests, in light of new data, scholarly views on EB III urbanism and the rise of cities and states and on EB IV pastoral nomadism in the southern Levant need to be reevaluated. Bringing together cutting-edge scholarship from an international group of specialists in the Early Bronze Age in the northern and southern Levant, this volume is an essential handbook for Early Bronze Age studies.

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Judging from the sheer amount of textual material left to us, the rulers of ancient Ur were above all else concerned with keeping track of their poorest subjects, who made up the majority of the population under their jurisdiction. Year after year, administrators recorded, in frightening detail, the whereabouts of the poorest individuals in monthly and yearly rosters, assigning tiny parcels of land to countless prebend holders and starvation rations to even more numerous estate slaves. The texts published in this volume—dating from the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur (ca. 2100–2000 BC)—attest to the immense investment of the ancient rulers in managing their subjects. This volume presents editions of two hundred and twenty-four cuneiform tablets selected from the Schøyen Collection, the vast majority of which have not been previously published. The ancient provenience for these texts is primarily Umma, with other core provinces represented in smaller numbers, such as notable contributions from ancient Adab, which is underrepresented in the published record. In order to provide a fuller picture of the administration of the Ur III state, a number of texts from other collections, both published and unpublished, have been integrated into this volume. Accompanied by Jacob L. Dahl’s precise translations, extensive commentary, and exhaustive indexes, this volume presents extensive new data on prosopography, economy, accounting procedures, letters, contracts, technical terminology, and agriculture that adds significantly to our knowledge of society and the economy during the Third Dynasty of Ur.An important contribution to the study of the Ur III period, in particular for Assyriology, this volume will serve as a useful handbook for scholars and students alike.

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Modeled after previous seasonal reports, this ninth volume of the Madaba Plains Project’s excavations at Tall al-ʿUmayri, Jordan gives a detailed accounting of the artifactual finds from the 2004 season of the excavations, accompanied by hundreds of photos and supplemented with related research. The active fields in 2004 included Field A, the western citadel with Early Iron Age domestic structures; Field B, the western defenses and northwestern domestic quarters showcasing a rare Late Bronze Age temple and palace complex; Field H, the southwestern acropolis boasting an emerging Late Iron I courtyard sanctuary; and Field L, the southern edge with Iron I remains, limited Late Iron II architecture, and the now nearly fully exposed area of a Late Hellenistic agricultural complex. These chapters are supplemented by an article on sherds with incised marks or repair holes and another on the sixth Persian provincial seal impression found at ʿUmayri. The most impressive discovery of the season was the Late Bronze Age temple and palace complex in Field B. Although not completely cleared in 2004, the emerging structure has contributed significantly to information about an underrepresented period in central Jordan. With walls surviving to two and three meters high and five rooms—an entry hall with standing stones, a sanctuary enclosing a cultic niche with five standing stones, a “favissa” space for preserving cultic artifacts, and two rooms serving an as yet undetermined function—this structure helps to fill in a number of gaps in our understanding of the Late Bronze Age in the region. In addition to the editors, the contributors include David R. Berge, Kent V. Bramlett, David C. Hopkins, John I. Lawlor, and Gloria London.

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This book brings to complete and final publication two past excavations conducted at the site of Ramat Raḥel. A major part of the report is devoted to publishing the results of Yohanan Aharoni’s long-term excavation project at the site during the years 1954, 1956, 1959–1962. The renewal of excavations at the site in 2004 triggered the need to reevaluate the site’s architecture and stratigraphy, and from that the idea to publish this report was born.

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From the Introduction: “The book of Job does not promote silence about God because we cannot say anything about him. Otherwise, this book would never have been written. But the book of Job does bid farewell to certain types of theology—and we need not bemoan their loss: theology as the wisdom of the world projected into heaven; theology as pious reflection on a higher being that then mistakes traditional or innovative ideas about God entirely for God himself; theology that purports to communicate direct revelation from God. The book of Job distrusts and disbelieves all this to its core. Instead, it states clearly that this is not God; these are only graven images. Such fundamental criticism of all pseudo-theology is—and here we can only agree with the book of Job—not the end but the very beginning of theology.”This book is not an attempt to cover every angle and answer every question that we have about the book of Job. Instead, Konrad Schmid, in the introductory chapter, provides us with an analysis of the structure of the book that helps us to see the book as a whole. And Manfred Oeming, in the chapters that follow, provides clear snapshots of various elements of the book, including a summary of the dialogues, Job’s monologue, Elihu’s speech (“the Anti-Monologue”), Job’s encounter with God, and the destination (of Job’s journey). Between them, the two authors provide an accessible scholarly and theological approach to the book that is richly satisfying.

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